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Blair must explain why police didn't arrest Rob Ford

Why did police sit back and watch the mayor for months while he repeatedly met with an alleged dealer and apparently took curious packages from him?

Police Chief Bill Blair says one of the complications that prevented police from searching Rob Ford during any of his many curious meetings with Alexander Lisi (such as the one pictured here) was that they were "sureillance conscious." It's not clear why that should have mattered.

Earlier this week, he was musing publicly about his police force’s handling of a criminal probe into disgraced mayor Rob Ford. No charges were laid. The suspected drugs were never seized and therefore cannot now be proved to be cocaine. That decision protected the mayor from future prosecution.

We wondered why Toronto police failed to do more than simply watch the mayor — a now admitted user and buyer of illicit drugs — for months while he repeatedly met with an alleged drug trafficker at curious times, where curious packages were apparently exchanged. (In this context, it should be noted that police had knowledge that the accused drug trafficker had boasted to friends that he was the mayor’s dealer.)

We suspect, however, that when the chorus of voices who were asking the same prickly question began to grow uncomfortably robust, Blair changed tack. Hence, his slightly more elaborate comments about the police investigation into Ford.

But Blair’s still cryptic remarks should not be considered the end of the matter. Far from it. We believe that his latest comments raise even more questions that he should be required to address in perhaps less agreeable circumstances, with less agreeable inquisitors.

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First, Blair now insists that the failure to stop, search and potentially arrest Ford — despite ample evidence to support such actions — were decisions that were left “to the individual officer” on the ground and in the moment, the National Post reported. Note that the Chief does not suggest that search and arrest would have been in any way unlawful.

In effect, Blair has punted responsibility for this critical question to a subordinate. Simply put, what Blair has done is to say to Torontonians: “Hey, don’t ask me why the mayor wasn’t stopped, searched or arrested, ask the other guy.”

How’s that for leadership?

Of course, “the individual officer” will, no doubt, be equally mum about the failure to repeatedly stop, search and potentially arrest Ford. That officer, by law, cannot speak without Blair’s permission. So, in the end, we still don’t have an answer to a reasonable and legitimate question being asked by many Torontonians.

This is unacceptable. And until Blair answers that question reasonably, no amount of carefully parsed obfuscation will do.

It will not suffice because if a black 20-year-old had been watched doing what the mayor was routinely doing, he’d have been promptly arrested, and the packages and any drugs or money seized would be available to use in a criminal prosecution.

If that scenario doesn’t resonate, imagine if the police watched you meeting again and again a man who had boasted of being your drug dealer, where suspicious packages were being exchanged. How long do you think it would take before the police stopped and searched you?

One reason Blair has obliquely suggested his officers did not act was because Ford and Sandro Lisi, the mayor’s occasional driver and an accused drug trafficker and extortionist, were “surveillance conscious.” Reportedly, the police were concerned about possibly being “set up” by the pair.

“I think that would have been something the officers … had to take into consideration,” Blair is quoted as saying.

This is nonsensical. Set up for what, precisely? The police were acting lawfully throughout. Blair needs to provide Torontonians with a fuller explanation of how and why Ford’s and Lisi’s apparent ability to detect surveillance prevented his investigators from searching and potentially arresting one or both of them?

Blair also now says that he remained “at arm’s length from the investigation,” that he “wasn’t receiving detailed particulars.” Despite this, he acknowledges personally assigning a homicide detective to probe allegations of videotaped drug use by the mayor and insists that he was “kept apprised of the progress of [the] work” of investigators.

This is confusing. On the one hand, Blair is hand-picking investigators, and yet, on the other, he claims to be keeping at arm’s length. Which is it, Chief Blair?

All of this is symptomatic of the perfunctory manner in which Blair has dealt with the questions still swirling around his force’s controversial probe into Ford and associates.

More than that, this is what double-standard policing looks and behaves like. It seems that there is one rule for the mayor, another for the rest of us. If that’s not the case, the Chief must show us; if it is, it’s intolerable.

Clayton Ruby is a prominent civil rights lawyer. Andrew Mitrovica was an investigative reporter for the CBC, CTV and the Globe and Mail.

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